It's disappointing major weather media groups that exist off NOAA/NWS data have been deafeningly silent about federal staffing hits and proposed cuts to NOAA. No letters of support. No news reporting on their detrimental effects to forecasting. Just glaring editorial omission. 🧵 Before anyone retorts "it's their job to stick to weather, blah, blah, blah," these networks have dedicated news desks, entire news teams, journalists, news directors. They regularly report on the ongoings of NOAA and the NWS, including new tech, forecast tools, and products.

A few maps I made tonight to compare areas of rising and sinking air over the past 3 weeks to past seasons. Pretty extreme subsidence over the east Pacific with lots of rising air over Africa; sinking branch perhaps a touch too far east, maybe too much rising air over Africa. Interesting the same period in 2022 had a similar look but the sinking branch was shifted west. This was a period without any tropical activity prior to September 1st (Danielle formed on September 1st).

The current outbreak of Saharan dust across the tropical Atlantic is the highest since at least early June 2022. Dust cover over the Atlantic in 2023 was the lowest since satellite records began in 2002. High dust can stifle hurricane formation and help cool down Atlantic waters.

Note: @NASA data used for this plot is only available through July 8th, so the weekly average shown on the plot likely doesn't capture the full degree of the ongoing dust outbreak.

I somehow missed this terrific Neal Dorst @WeatherwiseMag piece from January. As it turns out...
+ Col. Duckworth flew into the eye of a 1933 hurricane, a decade before his supposed first hurricane flight
+ The 1943 flight wasn't on a dare
+ Duckworth didn't disobey orders to fly





Also the 1935 Labor Day hurricane was flown into (!) by Capt. Leonard Povey – an American in the Cuban Army Corps at the time – when it was only 50-75 miles southeast of the Florida Keys and likely a Category 4 hurricane. This was done in a single engine biplane, mind you.

The June Atlantic Meridional Mode or AMM was the highest since June 2010 per @UW_AOS. The AMM explains twice the variance of Atlantic tropical activity than MDR sea surface temperatures. Typically, a strong AMM signals climate factors favoring deep tropical Atlantic hurricanes. If you're interested in learning more about the association between the AMM and hurricane season activity, I encourage you to read Dan Vimont and Jim Kossin's seminal 2007 paper here: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.10…